FDA Rules Won’t Work, Will Harm Small Farmers

Posted on August 23, 2012 | Comments Off on FDA Rules Won’t Work, Will Harm Small Farmers

The FDA recently decided to delay implementing about $1.4 billion of food safety regulations until after the November election. The ​USA Today​ editorial board argues in today’s paper that the FDA should stop dragging its feet and enact them now. They were kind enough to give Greg Conko and me some space to put forth an opposing view. We think the FDA should scrap the rules entirely for two reasons: ineffectiveness and rent-seeking:

These rules, being drafted to implement last year’s food-safety law, will waste billions of dollars on antiquated practices unlikely to do much good. They will, however, aid giant food corporations by hobbling smaller competitors and make it harder for companies of all sizes to adopt innovative safety methods and technologies.

Enacted in response to 2010’s massive egg recall, the law will spend nearly $1 billion to double the number of inspections on farms and in food processing facilities. That may sound appealing, but it only means that most facilities will be inspected every five years instead of every 10. Designated “high-risk” facilities would be inspected just once every three years.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Publications, regulation

Slow News Day

Posted on August 20, 2012 | Comments Off on Slow News Day

Politico: @PaulRyansMom is not Paul Ryan’s mom

Twitter strikes again.

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Posted in Elections, Political Animals

There Is Nothing Left to Cut

Posted on August 20, 2012 | Comments Off on There Is Nothing Left to Cut


The city of Detroit’s water and sewerage department employs a horseshoer. He makes “$29,245 in salary and about $27,000 in benefits”.

The department does not use any horses.

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Posted in Spending

The Economics of Spam

Posted on August 20, 2012 | Comments Off on The Economics of Spam

Timothy Taylor summarizes a fascinating new paper on the cat-and-mouse game between e-mail spammers and service providers:

For example, when many people label a message as “spam,” then it helps the anti-spam software to look for those words or URLs repeated in other messages, so that those messages can be filtered out. But then spammer responded with creative misspellings (like “VIagrA”) to trick the anti-spam filter, and used many different URLs that would all take the unwary to the same sales page.

In addition, the spammers use software to mark messages as “not spam,” thus trying to offset those who label them as spam. Rao and Reiley write: “In four months of 2009 Yahoo! Mail data, our Yahoo! colleagues found that (suspiciously) 63 percent of all “not spam” votes were cast by users who never cast a single “spam” vote.”

Talyor also kindly links a free download of the paper, published in the Journal of Economic Pespectives, which he edits.

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Posted in Economics, Technology

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on August 20, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation


Just another week in the world of regulation:

  •  65 new final rules were published last week, down from 68 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 35 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • All in all, 2,431 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,868 new rules.
  • 1,943 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 49,910 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 77,985 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 28 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $16.37 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
  • One economically significant rule was published last week.
  • So far, 248 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
  • So far this year, 460 final rules affect small business. 63 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Last week’s economically significant rule comes from the EPA. It changes offshore oil drilling procedures in the wake of the 2010 BP spill. You can read the 137-page rule here; Politico kindly summarizes it here.
  • The National Mine Safety and Health Review Commission is moving its headquarters.
  • The Pagosa skyrocket, Parachute beardtongue, and DeBecque phacelia are more than cool potential band names. These plant species are the beneficiaries of critical habitat designations, courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
  • If you would like to request that a tv show be closed captioned, take note that the FCC has changed some of its relevant terminology.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com

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Posted in regulation

Beat Those Cubs

Posted on August 18, 2012 | 1 comment

At 54-64, the playoffs are relegated to a distant memory for the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers, whose 2011 predecessors nearly made it to the World Series. But there are small mercies in this miserable season. They can still finish with a better record than the rival Chicago Cubs (46-72), who are enduring an even worse year.

By my calculations, the magic number for this secondary goal is 47. Any combination of Brewer wins and Cub losses adding up 47 guarantees Milwaukee’s bragging rights entering next season.

As of this writing, there are 44 games left to play. Of course, the Brewers are losing to Philadelphia, and the Cubs are beating Cincinnati right now. Both margins appear decisive, so call the magic number 47 with 43 games left to play, barring a heroic comeback in either game. The playoffs may be out of the picture, but this will still be a fun race to watch.

1 Comment

Posted in Sports

Somebody Warn Mrs. Doubtfire

Posted on August 17, 2012 | 1 comment


There has been a rash of real-life drive-by fruitings in the UK.

1 Comment

Posted in General Foolishness

Regulation Roundup

Posted on August 17, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation Roundup


Some of the stranger regulatory goings-on of late:

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Posted in Uncategorized

CEI Podcast for August 16, 2012: Drought, Food Prices, and Ethanol

Posted on August 16, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for August 16, 2012: Drought, Food Prices, and Ethanol


Have a listen here.

Severe drought in the Midwest has driven corn prices to record levels. Policy Analyst Brian McGraw argues that ending the federal government’s ethanol mandate could help families who are struggling to pay their heightened grocery bills. Under the mandate, nearly 40 percent of this year’s corn crop will be used for fuel instead of food.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Price and Wage Controls

Regulation and the Setting Sun

Posted on August 16, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation and the Setting Sun

Agencies are well-equipped for passing regulations, but not for repealing them. This becomes a problem as the years march on, and dusty old rules that don’t apply in today’s world retain the force of law. Over at RealClearPolicy, David Deerson and I propose an easy fix: automatic sunsets for all new regulations. Here’s how it would work:

Just as every carton of milk has an expiration date, sunset provisions automatically end agencies, programs, and regulations after a fixed period of time, unless specifically reauthorized by Congress. We already know the idea works. Several states already have sunset laws in place. They typically establish a sunset committee or commission, which reviews programs and agencies whose time is almost up and makes recommendations to the legislature. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that Texas saves $42 for every dollar it spends on sunset reviews.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Publications, regulation

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